Mould experiments planned and set to go

Today students worked hard on planning their mould-growing experiments using bread as the food base. We discussed the idea of a fair test again and students set about making their plan and preparing their bread samples. Some are looking the effects of moisture, others are investigating the impact of preservatives, ultraviolet light and other at the differences that may eventuate between the plain, wholemeal or whole seed varieties or brands.

We also talked about how to write up a background, revisited the mould vimeo film we half-viewed the other day and looked at the information offered in four books which focused on fungi.  http://vimeo.com/20196310 Hopefully this film will run faster at your homes than at school. I have watched it three times and think it is quite a useful base of knowledge. It has an excellent part on Florey and Fleming and beneficial aspects of fungi which we haven't see at school because the download fails. It is definitely worth watching. There are also two books totally dedicated to Florey and Fleming available in the classroom for reading.

Today, Students also learnt about the use of bibliographies or cited-sources and learnt how to write up one. They have taken notes in their Science books.

Most students cut their bread samples down to 100 square centimetres so mould growth can be more easily converted to a percentage.

Throw in an assembly and a music lesson, and suddenly the day was over. A big WELL DONE to those four students who shared their reports on the book and film The Lorax. The deliveries were clear, informative and pretty much flawless.

A big thank you to all parents who came to the discussions sessions. 

Tonight's homework is to design a cover page for their investigation inserting an image and to start drafting up the background information on moulds. Some students need to think about how they are going to collect the data and record their observations on the three samples they have prepared.

Writing Persuasive Text, The Lorax continued...

First up today I read students Krista Bell's book Lofty's Mission as a way of introducing the ways in which animals were use or abused in warfare. The book is fiction, but in Australia between 1942 and 1943, during the Second World War, home breeders like Charlie Morris donated more than 13, 000 baby pigeons "squeakers" to the army to be trained as messenger pigeons. Several Australian birds won the Dickin medal for bravery. We also looked at some non-fiction accounts and examples of the ways in which animals were employed during the major wars Australia has been involved in. Students will be writing a persuasive text either in favour or against the use of animals in warfare tomorrow. Today they were also provided with a structure to assist them.  This ties in with all the work we have done on emotive texts and use of rhetorical questions over the last three weeks.

Structure:
Introduction
– include a statement to give the author’s opinion
– preview important arguments
– engage the reader’s attention
Body
– include a series of paragraphs
– give a new idea or argument with reasons and examples to support it in each paragraph
– use persuasive language
– use quoted or reported speech
– use cohesive language to link ideas between paragraphs
Conclusion
– restate the position of the writer
– sum up the main arguments
– include request action to be taken by the reader (optional)
– do NOT give any new information


We then view a short film clip from Behind the News on sniffer dogs used to detect bombs.   We revisited the idea of using keywords to take notes.

http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s2214523.htm

After lunch we read some factual accounts of animals being used  in warfare in terms of transport haulage, communications, morale boosters, and as live weapons. We also spent a fair bit of time looking at how to do a good search on a topic and to question sources without adequate citation or from trustworthy websites. Tonight students have been requested to do some further reading on animals in warfare and to explore their arguments ready to write their persuasive text in a 50 minute time frame first up tomorrow morning..

The Lorax was also back on the agenda and a generous amount of time and guidance given to look at the similarities and differences between the original version of The Lorax and the Hollywood adaption. Students will be expected to continue working on this tomorrow night as part of their literacy homework. 

We watched the trailer again to refresh their memories and looked at IMDb the Internet Movie Database.

Maths will be a major focus tomorrow.

Big day out and an extension of the room!

Today was a fabulous day and I was so proud of the way the grade 5/6 students looked after their buddies and sat with them on the bus and in the cinema. I might add it was also one of the quietest bus trips to and from a venue that I have ever had.  The Lorax was not disappointing and it will provide for some interesting discussions following the Easter break. A big thank you to Rachel who came on the excursion with us. 

The biggest surprise of the day which awaited us when we returned was the mysterious sign that Easter Bunnies Hayley and Arnold left for us on the Science storeroom door. The darlings had spent all their free time whilst we were away on a secret mission (not even the boss knew about) cleaning and moving gear from the Science and general storeroom which adjoins our little classroom so we could have a bigger classroom. I might have to rename the blog The Now  Not So Little Classroom up the Back. There are a few shelves and spare ceiling panels to move, and after Easter the students can help me set it up as a withdrawal area, recover a display board and set up an area for shooting our animations and doing lots of fun creative activities. I am so excited about the new space! There are new desks coming soon too.

Students also did very well on the words with silent letters. We also had time to run through the assessment rubric before we left for the cinema. Students had their usual music lesson as we were able to swap it into the early morning block. 

After lunch I handed out the reports and we practised our assembly item. Then it was off to assembly. I hope everyone has an enjoyable Easter break. Congratulations to those students who received certificates in assembly today.

Literacy Day and music options

Today was a full on literacy day with students coming and going to music options from 12 o'clock onwards. Mr Stafford's extras who came in for the afternoon were very well-behaved.

First up was Spelling Bingo, followed by 40 minutes where students finished off their responses to the newspaper editorials. The focus was on the use of rhetorical questions in the letters to the editor.

We then focused on personification. Personification involves giving human qualities to objects or animals. The work is in their Writer's Notebooks. We will be sharing the purpose and some of the aspects of this literacy book tomorrow in assembly.

Distant waves hushing...

The tower clock coughed, whirred and struck three.

The tail light blinked three times and died.

After recess and daily phys.ed students all read their pages of  the fable,The Lorax, to recreate the story a second time. The students were asked to concentrate on their posture and their delivery, paying attention to expression and clarity. There were some sterling performances and a few average ones as well. After this students completed their what, who, why where, and when notes in their Writer's Notebook. This will help them do their book reports. (synopsis, character study, and messages) Much more depth will be required when we do the Storm Boy film report after Easter.

We then looked at an example of a  synopsis (summary of the story) and discussed characterisation (physical description, personality, motives) and the central messages of the original Dr Seuss version of The Lorax. Student only had to choose only one of the two main characters to concentrate on. Some are doing The Lorax and others are looking the Once-ler.  Those students who fully applied themselves and didn't have a lot of music options should have finished the first drafts. They have literacy homework tonight to neatly write up or publish these into their presentation A3 card folded into booklet form. The second half of the card is for after we have viewed the adaption we are going to see at the cinema tomorrow.  Students will be examining  the similarities and differences between this Hollywood production and the original book by Dr. Seuss after the Easter break. We were going to do our last half an hour of t-ball but many students were out for music options, and I also decided that some of them hadn't really pulled their weight in the afternoon.

We also read the review of the latest adaption of The Lorax  by David and Margaret on the At the Movies website and then watched the trailer.

Assessment rubric each student will be given tomorrow. Assignment due one week following Easter.

By the way, here is a rebuttal of The Lorax called  The Truax sponsored by the logging industry and published by the National Wood Flooring Manufacturers' Association, which is worth looking at:
http://www.stuartflooring.com/downloads/truax.pdf

The Lorax, Writer's Notebook and more subtraction

Today was a full on day with no students going in and out of class. Crack the whip!  First up students were given  a copy of the cover of The Lorax by Dr Seuss and asked to do either a See, Think, Wonder Y chart or a Talk to the Picture on it. These visual organizers are pasted in the back of their Writer's Notebook.  We then shared our ideas and watched the animation adapted from the book. On Thursday we will be viewing the latest adaption at Village Cinema with our book buddies. Students have been given a couple of pages of the book each which they will read out in turn to recreate the book (a second visit if you like after watching the above animation). I noticed some of the texts were still in tote trays at the end of the day so those students must be confident with an off the cuff delivery  tomorrow. We  also discussed the use of personification and alliteration and assonance in relation to the text. After lunch students used the What, Who, Why, Where formula to further explore the animation. This will be continued tomorrow and used to assist them write a synopsis (summary) of the film, a character study and a discussion of the main messages the film delivers. The homework night for finishing this literacy activity will be the usual Wednesday slot. 

After recess, it was a maths focus, beginning with three Guess the number games, and then a lesson on mixed numbers as many students weren't sure about this concept. It was then time for Monster Grid 9. The subtraction lesson from Friday was then continued. Students were paired up and used the MAB to assist them in their understanding of regrouping.  Students only had  homework if they did not quite finish this activity, I will be collecting them tomorrow morning.

The afternoon started with Quiet Reading whilst I helped students scan their Marvellous Microorganism jigsaws. Some of these are outstanding. We still need to make some more boxes to house them in.  And then, as stated before students continued with The Lorax study.